Photos surfaced on X Thursday showing Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and 26-year-old social media influencer Kat Abughazaleh seated closely together at a Chicago cocktail lounge, less than a month before the two face off in a crowded Democratic primary for Illinois' 9th congressional district.
Both are running to replace retiring 81-year-old Rep. Jan Schakowsky. They are two of 15 Democratic candidates in the race. And apparently, they decided to cap off a primary debate by squeezing into a booth at Uptown Chicago's century-old Green Mill Cocktail Lounge with, per the photos, what appeared to be multiple alcoholic drinks on the table and just inches separating them.
According to the Daily Caller, Angela Van Der Pluym posted the images on X with pointed commentary:
"A VERY married @DanielBiss has a VERY cozy after-debate drinks at the Green Mill with his congressional opponent @KatAbughazaleh."
She added that she'd "never seen two congressional race opponents look at each other the way Daniel is looking at Kat." Biss is more than 20 years Abughazaleh's senior.
Biss's campaign did not address the matter directly. Instead, it referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to a post by Axios reporter Justin Kaufmann, who moderated the debate and said he was present at the bar. Kaufmann insisted the photos were taken about 20 minutes after the debate ended and identified himself as "the bald guy on the other side" of the booth. His defense of the scene was brief:
"There is nothing inappropriate going on. Jeez."
Abughazaleh's campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Illinois' 9th congressional district hasn't been represented by a Republican since 1949. Former Vice President Kamala Harris won it by 37 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election. So the March 17 Democratic primary is, for all practical purposes, the general election. Whoever wins this 15-candidate scrum will go to Congress.
Recent polling shows the field is tight at the top. A February Impact Research poll, sponsored by Biss's campaign, put him at 31%, with Abughazaleh and Democratic Illinois State Sen. Laura Fine tied at 18%. A January GBAO Strategies poll had Biss and Fine tied at 21%, with Abughazaleh at 14%.
The frontrunners jockeying for position in a safe blue seat aren't debating whether to move left. They're debating how far.
The cozy photos might raise eyebrows for personal reasons, but the political picture is just as telling. Biss and Abughazaleh aren't opponents who disagree on much of substance. They occupy overlapping territory on the progressive left, and their records on immigration enforcement illustrate the point.
Abughazaleh made headlines after a grand jury indicted her and five others for allegedly blocking law enforcement vehicles outside an ICE facility in September 2025. When journalist Tara Palmeri confronted her with video of the incident in October, showing the Gen Z candidate banging on a federal law enforcement vehicle, Abughazaleh abruptly ended the interview.
Biss, for his part, told CNN's Erin Burnett in September 2025 what happens when ICE arrives in Evanston:
"I'm able to go immediately to the location, share rights that individuals have with them, and inform them of their rights. Videotape, bear witness, hold ICE officials accountable."
He described this system casually: when ICE comes to his city, he gets "a text." The sitting mayor of an American city has built a personal rapid-response protocol to obstruct federal immigration enforcement. Biss received the endorsement of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC in November 2025, which tells you everything about where this district's center of gravity sits.
One candidate got indicted for physically blocking ICE vehicles. The other runs to the scene with a camera to "hold ICE officials accountable." These are the two people sharing a booth and drinks.
The influencer-turned-candidate brings more than legal trouble to the race. Abughazaleh declared her House candidacy just over a month before Schakowsky announced she would not seek reelection, a bit of timing that suggests either remarkable foresight or inside knowledge. She previously worked as a video content creator at Media Matters for America, the left-wing media watchdog that exists primarily to pressure platforms into silencing conservative voices.
In January, she came under scrutiny after blaming her narcolepsy for failing to show up to a candidate forum hosted by a chapter of Indivisible, a leftist activist group. When you can't be bothered to attend an event hosted by your own ideological allies, the campaign trail is sending you a message.
Maybe the photos are nothing. Maybe two political opponents can share a booth at a cocktail lounge, and it means exactly as little as Kaufmann insists. Booths at the Green Mill are, by his own account, cozy.
But the optics matter less than the underlying reality they expose. This is a district where 15 Democrats are scrambling for a seat that no Republican has held in more than 75 years. The frontrunners compete not on principle but on who can position themselves further left. One obstructs ICE with his phone camera. The other allegedly did it with her body. Both want to take that energy to Congress.
The voters of Illinois' 9th will choose between varying shades of the same progressive orthodoxy on March 17. The Green Mill photos just made the shading a little harder to distinguish.